There is no way GR would get an NHL team.
- The market is too small
- They don't have an NHL-sized arena and wouldn't build a new one any time soon
- Most importantly - the main reason why they have such a great turn-out and a high quality product on-ice is because of the RED WINGS. If they had their own separate team, they wouldn't have nearly as many fans, as most would stay loyal to the Wings (and to a much lesser extent, the Blackhawks). The city simply isn't big enough or isolated enough to grow a brand new fan base when the potential fans grew up following a team with 80+ years of tradition just a couple hours away.
I would agree that MLS would be a possibility though, especially since Detroit's never really did anything with the potential expansion interest.

Before the WCoH started in the off-season, I was dying to watch some hockey. I saw that the KHL started already, so I watched a couple games to see how Datsyuk was doing. On his off-days I still wanted to watch hockey, so I picked a game at random to see how it was. That led me to throw on a game pretty much daily in the background while I work. It's much more entertaining than I thought it'd be, and fun to find out which former NHLers and Wings prospects play on what teams.

I was 0/3 last year (though props to kipwinger for nailing his). Let's try this again:
1. The Wings blow everyone here away and make the playoffs easily (2nd in division)
2. We have 2 30-goal scorers at the end of the season - Nyquist and Larkin. Tatar barely misses the mark.
3. Vegas finally reveals their name and it doesn't suck.

1. Larkin gets sent down when Dats/Helm return, but the next time he gets called up he stays up for good 2. Green returns to prominence and makes the ASG 3. Boston gets a top-3 draft pick from the lotto

I think the key factor is consistency. Watching both XO and Jensen on the Griffins last year, you can tell when Jensen is having a good game and definitely when he is having a bad game, but XO always looks solid and never like a liability. This in my opinion is why XO was up in Detroit during half of the Griffins games I attended last year, and why he got the nod this year.

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